In yesterday's blog, we discussed the story of Rancho Los Feliz, a ridiculously large block of land that was granted to the first mayor of what would become Los Angeles. It was originally 6,647 acres, but by 1882, small sections had been shaved off and sold to various investors. The bulk of it was sold to a Welsh immigrant named Griffith J. Griffith. He was fifteen years old when his family moved from the old country to Ashland, Pennsylvania, located in the heart of coal country (near Centralia, a town that deserves its own blog entry!). At twenty-three years of age, Griffith moved to San Francisco, where he took a job as manager of the Herald Publishing Company and also became a correspondent specializing in the mining industry. He not only became an expert, but amassed a great fortune from mining. He bought 4,000 acres of what was the Rancho Los Feliz in 1882, and five years later married Mary Agnes Christina Mesmer.

Griffith and his wife donated exactly 3,015 acres of their Los Angeles land to the city as a public park in 1896, calling it a Christmas present. The city accepted the gift and named it after Griffith. He would later donate another thousand acres along the Los Angeles River to the city as well. Griffith Griffith was an outspoken teetotaler in public but, behind closed doors, he allegedly experienced alcohol-fueled rages. That was the reason given when, in 1903, he shot his wife in the face. He did not, surprisingly, kill her, but he did disfigure Christina. There was a sensational trial, and Griffith was sentenced to three years imprisonment at San Quentin for assault with a deadly weapon (he served less than two). Christina did get a divorce from him, and gained custody of their only child. When Griffith died in 1919, he left $1.5 million to the city for construction of a Greek Theater and an observatory, both of which were constructed in the park named after him. Thanks to the impact of movies, Griffith Park Observatory is one of the most famous in the country.